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Given that New Labour was architected by two Scots, so I'm not really sure how bringing up their foreign policy backs up the argument that independent Scottish foreign policy would be different. But whatever. Ali may be right; he's just bad at arguing.
Also, over and above your wonderful predictions of future Scottish foreign 'policy' (if you can call telling your traditional trading partners and closest neighbours to fuck off a sensible policy) calling Tony Blair a Scot is like calling Chris Froome English. But whatever, the whole country should be held accountable to two Westminster-based career politicians (with a huge majority of the vote across the UK, which again, removing Scotland's seats from the equation wouldn't have influence the overall election result) just because you seem to think that they 'architected' New Labour.
Obviously, I defer to your wonderfully unbiased and erudite arguing powers over Tariq Ali's miserable attempts to look at historical facts from a post-colonial Indian viewpoint and apply them to the Scottish referendum.
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calling Tony Blair a Scot is like calling Chris Froome English. But whatever, the whole country should be held accountable to two Westminster-based career politicians (with a huge majority of the vote across the UK, which again, removing Scotland's seats from the equation wouldn't have influence the overall election result) just because you seem to think that they 'architected' New Labour.
Actually it's a lot more like calling Froome a Kenyan. Blair was born in Scotland and educated in Scotland. He's Scottish.
And no, I'm going to give up writing things if you're not going to read them and just invent things with a quite breathtaking liberty of interpretation (clearly displaying your own prejudices there). I am saying that bringing up the policies of two Scotsmen is useless as evidence for an argument that Scottish policies will be different because they are Scottish.
bq
I do not see why a) Scotland could not be internationalist now and develop links with Scandinavia regardless of the state of the union, and b) why Ali finds it 'risible' that an independent Scotland would be parochial. Presumably relations with England are going to fall under the remit of foreign policy, and the founding act of that foreign policy will be to tell England, Wales and Northern Ireland "fuck off, we're going to cosy up to our far northern neighbours instead." That's pretty parochial.
Also, while we are on the subject. Given that New Labour was architected by two Scots, so I'm not really sure how bringing up their foreign policy backs up the argument that independent Scottish foreign policy would be different. But whatever. Ali may be right; he's just bad at arguing.